


Nesting: Part Two

by babybasschick96



Series: Nesting [4]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-15 09:14:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9228350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babybasschick96/pseuds/babybasschick96
Summary: Part Two of the Nesting Series.





	1. Prologue #2

**Author's Note:**

> Back to the “present” we go! With the exception of this prologue here, the rest of this Part takes place later on in the evening after the Epilogue/Prologue at the end of Part One. I apologize for this update taking so long—as I’ve already mentioned once back in Flashback #2, my medical situation has been a little more precarious over the last couple of weeks than we initially anticipated, and this Part has undergone some major reconstruction as I’ve edited it the last week or so. The story is still the exact same one that I had in mind when I initially wrote this; it’s just been restructured for POV consistency and I’ve added this second prologue for a little more perspective on the story in general. I didn’t intend on giving you guys access to the conversation in this Prologue until later on in the narrative, but given some of the feedback I’ve received on Flashback #1, I think I should give it to you now.  
> The following two chapters of this piece still need to be proofread, but I’ve mostly finished the true “revising” and “editing”, so hopefully they shouldn’t take too long after this one to post!  
> Unfortunately, there is still a large amount of angst in this Part, due to Part One still being largely unresolved in regards to the news revealed in the Epilogue/Prologue, but the tension will be resolved in Chapter Two of this Part, and Part Three will mostly be back to “fluff”. I don’t want to say more than that at this point in time, because I would like to avoid spoilers, but I did want to warn you about that before you got into the thick of Chapters One and Two and were wondering why I made the decisions that I did.  
> As always, thank you for taking the time to read, and let me know what you think!

_Approximately a week and a half before Nesting: Part One._

 

“Yes, dear,” Clark flashed a handsome grin across the deactivated robot at Diana and grinned even bigger when Diana huffed and rolled her eyes in response. A once strong attraction between the two of them had long since faded into what Clark could only describe as a sibling-like care and devotion to one another, and Clark enjoyed pushing all of the buttons that came with that station as often as he could. “We are in _my_ city—“

“Spare me your sermon,” one of Diana’s hands waved carelessly through the air as the other rested atop her sword hilt, and Clark’s lips pursed. He’d been on his way back from checking into some bogus small time story about some new kind of moss in the Park when Clock Frame or Clock Brain or whatever the guy’s name was had attacked the city, and Clark had taken the opportunity to change into his cape and let off some of his pent up steam as he helped Diana wrestle the machine to the ground. The guy inside was just some revenge-obsessed human, hell bent on destroying everything he could find, so the police had taken him away almost immediately, but the robot was too big for the humans to lift without bringing in cranes—which would have taken _weeks_ to acquire—so Clark had offered to stick around and help clean up as an excuse to stay away from the office and the troubles he knew were waiting for him as long as he could. “It is _my_ month to run the League in conjunction with Green Arrow, and _I_ will give all of the frivolous orders and explanations as I see fit, while _you_ sit around and listen to them patiently. Hello, again, Superboy.”

“Hey, Wonder Woman,” Conner gave a lazy wave as he descended from the heavens above them. “The Stratosphere and the Mesosphere are all clear.”

“Good to know,” Diana relaxed ever so slightly, and Clark would never stop being thankful that she’d given up her grudge against the young alpha for breaking her protégée’s heart when he went after his bond with Timothy all of those years ago. “That will make it easier to clean all of this up.”

“I know what you mean,” Conner flashed a much better natured grin at the older woman than Clark had as he reached down to grab his own piece of the destroyed robot on the ground, and this time, it was Clark rolling his eyes and murmuring underneath of his breath.

_“Show off—”_

“I’m sorry, what was that?” Diana quirked an eyebrow at Clark as she turned her attention back to him, and Clark’s shoulders dropped.

“Nothing, _highness_ ,” he resisted the urge to roll his eyes or huff a sigh. “Anything else you need before you leave?”

“…No,” Diana scrutinized him for a moment before she finally answered his question with a quirk to her lips, and Clark ignored the weight of her gaze in favor of grunting as he lifted the arm of the robot up off the ground. “That will be all. There’s a minor disturbance down in Brazil I must assist with—will you be okay to stay and help Superman clean up, Superboy?”

“Sure,” Conner nodded his head. “Call me if you need me down in Brazil, alright?”

“Of course,” Diana spared a second to send him a small smile before she shot up into the air, taking one more look around the Metropolis intersection before she flew off South, and for as annoyed as Clark was with Conner’s presence at times, Clark had to admit he was proud of how far he’d come. Things were quiet for a couple of minutes after that as Conner and Clark collected robot pieces from around the road and carried them over to the transport trucks that Diana had called in—or as quiet as it could get in the middle of a gigantic city—and Clark was thankful for that, until he moved on to the main control cavity of the robot and Conner floated down beside him.

“Need a hand with that, Old Man?”

“I will put you in a headlock and break all of your _Wendy the Werewolf Stalker_ DVDs in half,” Clark glared at him.

“No, you won’t,” Conner barked a laugh, and Clark could feel his eyes glow.

“ _Yes_ , I _will_ —“

“B was the one who bought them for me,” Conner sent another grin in Clark’s direction—this one distinctly from the ‘shit eating’ category, based on Ma’s old scale—and Clark was only able to hang onto his anger for approximately two and a half more seconds before his shoulders dropped.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he sighed, turning his gaze back to the robot. “Even I’m not stupid enough to do that, but…I will still put you in a headlock.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Conner’s hand came down on his shoulder, and once again Clark ignored the urge to roll his eyes. “But anyway, you want a hand with this?”

“Sure,” Clark nodded his head, studying the giant cockpit in front of them. “I was thinking about just ripping it in half so it’s easier to manage.”

“That sounds like a good enough plan to me—I don’t think the trucks are big enough to hall of it at once, anyway. You want me to circle around to the other side?”

“Nah, I’ll go,” Clark shook his head as he pushed off of the ground and into the sky. “And to answer your question before you ask—relationship issues.”

“Ah,” Conner made a noncommittal noise that sounded more reluctant than sympathetic in response to Clark’s explanation as to why he was so cranky, and Clark’s eyebrows furrowed as he flew up over the giant sphere-like structure.

“You don’t have to sound so surprised.”

Clark knew that nobody particularly _approved_ of the relationship he was in (hadn’t for years), but—

“I’m…I’m not going to say anything either way on this one, Dad,” it was rare that Conner pulled out the “Dad” card, but typically when he did, it was because he was trying to pacify Clark, and Clark knew that, too. “You know my opinions on the matter, but what you do with your life and where you stick your knot is up to you. As long as you aren’t hurting anybody, I’m not going to question that.”

“You know you sound like a high school textbook sometimes?” Clark grit back, instead of giving Kon a proper response to his words.

“Byproduct of being raised by Lex Luthor,” Conner shot back, and yeah, okay.

“I deserved that, didn’t I?” he spun in the air and regarded the robot in front of him—looking for rivets or hidden explosives that they needed to be careful of.

“Just a bit,” Clark didn’t need to look through the robot to know that Conner was nodding his head. “But it’s all good… Are you busy after we’re done here, or do you have somewhere you need to be?”

“I mean, I’ve got to get back to work eventually, but technically, I’m still out running down a scoop, so I’ve got some time,” Clark answered, only half paying attention to Conner’s words as his brain filtered through information about the robot that his body had ascertained through his various senses. “Why?”

“Oh, no reason—I was just wondering if maybe you had a minute we could talk?” Conner’s voice tilted up in question, and while Clark couldn’t put his finger on the emotion that underscored his tone, Clark’s muscles tensed at the uncertainty in Conner’s voice. “It’s cool if you don’t—I was just—“

“There’s an ice cream stand over on third that I’ve been meaning to take you to,” Clark cut Conner off calmly as he reached down to grab the robot, situating himself in the best place to rip the robot apart without causing any more damage to the asphalt it was lying on. “We could head over and check that out for a couple of minutes before I have to leave.”

“I…I would like that,” Conner’s answer came a couple of seconds later as he positioned himself diagonally across from Clark, and Clark spared a moment to give an, “okay”, before he got back to business with a loud snarl, and roughly fifteen minutes later found the two of them a couple of streets over—floating in the air with Clark’s cape billowing out behind them as Clark handed a twenty dollar bill over to the owner of the cart.

“Keep the change,” he flashed the man a “Superman” smile, before he turned and looked over at Conner. An unspoken agreement passed between the two of them as their eyes met, and barely a heartbeat later they were taking off in tandem, rising through the air, only to land on the roof of an apartment building somewhere across the way. They sat there in silence for about a half of a minute, licking at their respective cones as Clark watched the birds flying below and Conner seemingly got lost in his own thoughts, before Clark spoke back up, again. “So, what do you think?”

“What?” Conner furrowed his eyebrows as he looked over at Clark, and Clark suddenly realized how Diana must have felt dealing with _his_ antics earlier.

“The ice cream, Conner.”

“Oh, that—right—it’s good!” Conner stumbled over his words as he looked back to the cone in his hand and Clark found himself looking down at the chocolate dessert, too. “It’s a little strong for my liking, but its nice and thick—would probably pair well with some strawberry!”

“I prefer the mint chocolate chip my self, but they didn’t have any today,” Clark rambled, taking another lick of his own. As Conner had said, the stuff was nice and thick and Clark was thinking about nabbing the recipe that the owner used and taking it back to Jason so the omega could try to replicate it. “I stumbled upon the place a couple of weeks ago. I was out doing some shopping, and they were having a sale for their ‘Grand Opening’ of the year, and I decided to grab myself some—I’m glad now that I did because I’ve been there just about every day since, but…the ice cream wasn’t the only reason you stuck around, was it?”

“No,” Conner shook his head, giving a small sigh as he did so. “No, it wasn’t.”

Clark expected Conner to say something after that, to go on and explain why he’d asked Clark to hang around or ask about whatever it was that he had on his mind, but he just went back to absently licking at his ice cream as he watched the sun on the horizon until Clark was finally forced to speak up again.

“Is there something wrong?” he asked impatiently, if not a little cautiously.

“No…no, everything’s fine—it’s just…have you noticed anything different about Tim, recently?” Conner asked tentatively, his heels kicking back against the concrete of the building as he did so, and Clark immediately stiffened the same way that he did whenever anybody mentioned one of the Wayne Boys being in trouble. “Physically, I mean. It’s just—does he seem different to you?”

“No,” Clark shook his head slowly, thinking back over the last couple of times he’d seen Tim as he answered. A handful of times on various League Missions as Red Robin over the previous month; once or twice down in the Cave as Clark brought evidence of some kind to Bruce for analysis while Tim was half-out of uniform at the Computer in the last fortnight; the Sunday previous at Church with Ma… “I haven’t noticed anything wrong with him the last couple of times I’ve seen him…why? Is everything okay between the two of you? Are you fighting?”

“No—not at all,” Conner shook his head emphatically, and Clark relaxed a little bit as Conner cut off in order to duck down and lick a melting bit of his ice cream from the edge of his cone. “Tim and I are fine—better than fine, actually!”

Conner struggled with his ice cream for moment, but Clark watched as his face lit up and his lips stretched out into a love sick smile after he’d righted himself, and Clark couldn’t help but smile, too, as he watched Conner pick absently at a frayed thread of his jeans.

Even though he’d had been a full time member of the League for over two years, Conner refused to give up his old codename and his old uniform, and Clark would be lying if he said he didn’t envy him the ease and comfort of that sometimes.

“You know he’s planning on taking a couple of weekends off of work this summer so he can come out to the farm with me?” Conner’s gaze flicked over to Clark out of the corners of his eyes, and Clark sometimes wondered if that was how humans felt looking into other humans’ eyes all of the time. Mesmerized by all of the blending colors and the depth of joy he could practically feel radiating off of Conner. There had only ever been one other being’s gaze who had enraptured him so—pulled Clark in until he was drowning is swirling shades of deep blue and gray and could hardly breathe anymore and—

“No, I didn’t,” Clark shook his head, smiling in spite of the pain he felt spiking up through his chest at his latest train of smothered thought. “Does Ma know about them, yet?”

“Yes,” Conner beamed, his eyes returning to the horizon. “We’ll have to head back to Gotham for his heat, because the last time Ma let us use the barn I almost killed that delivery guy, but…the plan is for him to come out basically every weekend in July and August, so I don’t lose so much time with the cows and the gardens. He’s going to come out for Fair, too.”

“That’s wonderful, Conner,” Clark reached over to lay a hand on Conner’s shoulder, and Clark didn’t think it was possible, but Conner’s smile grew even bigger. “Really—it is.”

“Thanks, C,” Conner leaned into the hand on his shoulder. “I’m really looking forward to it. It’s just…you haven’t noticed anything different about him?”

Conner’s joy quickly faded into a quiet kind of worry, and Clark was reminded of where their conversation had started.

“He doesn’t seem, I don’t know…more stressed or tired or something?” Conner’s eyebrows furrowed as he looked back over at Clark. “Kind of like he hasn’t been sleeping or something? I was looking the other day, and I thought I saw something weird about his uterine cavity, but I’m not sure—”

“I’m sorry, Conner, but no—I haven’t noticed anything,” Clark squeezed Conner’s shoulder with the hand still resting there. “You know that I run preliminary checks on each of them whenever I see them, just to make sure that B hasn’t missed anything, but I’m afraid I only look at the most at-risk areas, and typically uterine cavities don’t fall under that category—at least not when it comes to injuries. Now that I know you’re concerned, I can take a look at him the next time I see him or pull him aside and ask…?”

“No, you don’t have to talk to him,” Conner shook his head before he took another distracted lick of his ice cream cone, and Clark watched the pinch of his face with concern. “I’m probably just overreacting, but…would you mind taking a look the next time you see him to make sure I’m not missing something?”

“Sure thing, son,” Clark found himself nodding his head. “Ma and I are planning on coming out to the Manor the night after tomorrow for dinner—you feel comfortable waiting that long?”

“Yeah, of course,” Conner nodded his head. “That’s fine! I’m not in any real rush—I know nothing _bad_ is going on, just…if you get a minute?”

“Not a problem,” Clark dismissed his concern with a firm nod of his head, and gave Conner’s shoulder another squeeze. “But that concern aside—I should really get going—“

“Me, too,” Conner gave a gruff sigh as he shifted to slip his phone out of his pocket. “It’s getting on 4:30, and I still have a three hour shift before I can head back to Gotham, and Aunt Diana’s calling for back up down in Brazil.”

“Earthquake?” Clark quirked an eyebrow, having missed whatever the commotion was.

“Close,” Conner hummed distractedly as he tip-tapped away at his keyboard, and Clark resisted the urge to peek over his shoulder when he realized that Conner was texting his mate in between checking for updates from the League. “Bane’s running a Venom outpost off of the coast.”

“Ah,” Clark nodded his head in a way that he hoped came off looking wise and sage (but probably didn’t). “I see. Isn’t Brazil a little far south for Bane?”

“Little bit,” Conner shrugged, that love sick smile taking over his face once again as he responded to whatever Tim’s response was before he turned his phone off and slipped it back down into his pocket with another sigh. “But that’s the job, isn’t it? You mind checking in with the lab to make sure that those trucks arrived on time, for me?”

“You and Diana do realize I’ve been doing this whole superhero thing longer than one of you has been alive, _right_?” Clark was less than amused.

“Yeah, yeah,” Conner more or less ignored his indignation, and Clark fought the urge to freeze him with his Blizzard Breath as Conner clapped him on the shoulder and squeezed again. “See you the night after tomorrow, then?”

“Tell Alfred Ma’s bringing mashed potatoes,” Clark’s face had contorted itself into something between a glare and a pout.

“Will do,” Conner nodded his head once in acknowledgment before he dropped his hand from Clark’s shoulder and pushed himself away from the building with half of his ice cream cone still in his hand. “And, hey, C?”

“Yeah?” Clark asked as the boy looked back over his shoulder and hesitated.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Clark gave a genuine—if not small—smile, before he gestured with his head towards the general direction of south. “Now go—before Diana comes back and castrates me for keeping you from your job.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Conner flashed him a grin, and Clark watched as he floated up and away, until Conner wrapped a shield of TTK around himself and shot off towards the horizon.

Clark counted his heartbeats until Conner was out of relative ear and eyeshot—or at least far enough away that he wouldn’t notice Clark’s actions, seventeen slow thumps in all—and promptly slumped down in his makeshift-seat and furrowed his eyebrows as he digested all of the things that Conner had revealed to him. It wasn’t common for the Bats to get sick—not even with the impossible schedules that they kept—and if Conner was worried enough that he came to Clark for reassurance, whatever was wrong with Tim couldn’t be good. Bruce ran more than enough blood work on all of his boys to rule out any kind of an external pathogen, and in spite of what Clark had led Conner to believe, Clark noticed every single change that each of the boys’ bodies went through, and Clark hadn’t seen anything that would cause the types of changes in Tim’s stamina or endurance that Conner was describing, and he’d just seen the omega three days previous, which probably meant that Tim was working himself too hard again, and Conner was just too polite to speak up and voice his concerns to his mate. Clark knew he shouldn’t say anything, knew it probably wasn’t his place, but Tim already had so much on his plate with the company and the hero-ing and _Bruce_ …

Clark regarded the cone in his hand with a glare for a moment before he just shoved it into his mouth and swallowed all of it down in one go. Usually, he tried to act more human than that—tried to slow down and take proper bites like a civilized member of society—but the ice cream was melting something fierce in the uninhibited spring sun, and Clark had lost his appetite anyway.

The napkin crumpled in his fist, the paper tearing against the strength of Clark’s skin and his muscles as Clark continued to contemplate what he was supposed to do about the whole Tim-thing, and not for the first time, Clark just wished there was something around that he could punch without risking the obliteration of a small continent.

“Why do you _do_ this to me?”

As always, the sun gave no answer to Clark’s whispered question, but it kept shining warmth and light down onto him, and Clark slowly relaxed back down against the concrete underneath of his legs.

“Thank you, for doing this to me,” the words were sighed and fatigued as Clark reached up to run a tired hand over his face, but he meant them nonetheless, and that was what mattered. Misunderstand as people might sometimes, Clark’s life on Earth was the only one he’d ever known, and he wouldn’t trade it for anything. Not even having Krypton back. Not when Earth had the Justice League and the Sun and the Moon and Clark’s half-human son and ice cream and Bruce Wayne and all of Bruce’s complicated children.

Clark stayed up on the roof for another minute, just soaking in the sun and listening to the one heartbeat that could calm even the worst of the fears inside of himself before he pushed himself up off of the building with a small grunt.

“Back to work we go,” he hummed un-amusedly to himself as he felt his phone vibrate underneath of his suit.

_Riiiing!_

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled as he fished the little metal device out. “I hear you… Hello—“

“ _Clark Kent, where the hell are you?”_ a very angry woman hissed the second that Clark had the phone up to his ear. _“You were supposed to be here ten minutes ago, and we’ve got a meeting with White in fifteen—“_

“Yes, dear,” Clark sighed and rolled his eyes as he propelled himself in the direction of the Daily Planet. “I’m just down the street—I’ll be up in a couple of minutes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Superboy arrives fifteen minutes late to a drug bust with a chocolate ice cream cone.  
> Bane is offended that Superboy didn’t bring him any, while basically everybody else in confused and Wonder Woman rolls her eyes.
> 
> A note on codenames: Kon has very-little-to-no reputation outside of Smallville as Conner Kent, whereas Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson etc. are basically “household” names, so they’re a little freer with his name in public than they are with the others—which is why Clark feels comfortable referring to him as Conner in this, but Kon refrains from returning the favor. Similarly, Diana has no public persona, and neither one of the Kryptonians give any context clues as to who “Tim” is.


	2. Chapter One

It had taken approximately two-point-eight seconds for shit to hit the fan after Jason had calmly spilled the beans, and not in any of the ways that Dick or Bruce had predicted.

“Look, I’m telling you, Bruce,” Tim repeated himself for the twelfth time in the previous forty minutes, irrationally clinical and dismissive—as if Bruce was obviously the one who wasn’t seeing sense and not himself, and Jason gritted his teeth at how far the conversation had devolved. “It’s not possible. I can’t be pregnant.”

They were down in the Media Room, again. The proper location was the first thing that Jason had insisted on after he’d asked Dick a million questions (which Dick had basically just shrugged his shoulders and made noncommittal noises of confusion at), and stolen the lab results out of Dick’s back pocket so that he could look them over for himself. Dick had been confused when Jason had mentioned the Media Room at first, especially when Jason had detoured up the staircase that led to the private rooms instead of going straight for the one that led down to the basement; but then Jason had pushed the door open to Tim’s room and started gathering up blankets and clothing and pillows, and shoving them into Dick’s arms, and Dick understood.

The nest that they’d built could never have been as good as one that Tim would have made, but Jason had hoped that it would at least give Tim a safe feeling environment to process the news in, and the act of wandering around the Mansion, finding everything they needed and dutifully carrying it back down to the Media Room where Dick agreed they should go, gave the two mates time to talk everything out and come up with best plan of action before they moved forward.

The biggest point of contention was whom all Dick and Jason should let in on the secret before they talked to Tim—if they told anyone at all. Dick felt like they should wait until everybody could come home and tell Tim altogether, while Jason cautioned doing something like that might make Tim feel like he was being ambushed, and that was a thing he wanted to avoid (both for Tim’s safety, and their own). For all of the hype about alphas being protective and hormonal, omegas were vicious and resourceful when they felt like they’d been backed into a corner, and not only would Tim fight his way through them, he would run once he finally felt like he was free and the only person who would be able to find him was Conner.

If they were lucky.

Unfortunately, Alfred had ambled by in that quiet little way that he had while Jason and Dick were still discussing the subject, and the conversation had quickly come to a close as Alfred dropped the vase of flowers in his hands, and both Jason and Dick had sighed as they turned to fill him in on the rest of the gory details. Bruce had come along next—maybe twenty minutes after a visibly distressed and uncertain Alfred had excused himself to go finish the rest of his preparations for dinner—wandering the halls in search for an explanation as to why the precious butler hadn’t been able to answer any of Bruce’s questions with anything more than shakes of his head and half-incoherent ‘mhmms’ that didn’t actually answer any of Bruce’s questions—and after a quick debate on the best course of action with simple changes of body language and twitches of lips, Jason gave into Dick’s unerring loyalty and respect, and begrudgingly broke the news.

To say that Bruce was surprised would be an understatement. He stood looking back and forth between Jason and Dick with his arms crossed over his chest like he didn’t believe Jason for a full minute, but a brief examination of the test results later only seemed to confuse Bruce more than anything, and he eventually agreed to help, joining in on Jason and Dick’s dialogue about what to do next as he bent down and picked the growing pile of blankets up off of the floor.

Damian had been the only one who hadn’t questioned it. He’d come up on Jason, Dick, and Bruce with raised eyebrows and his arms crossed over his chest—wondering what all of the fuss was about and why “Todd” was still “stinking up” the Manor. He and Dick had moved out to have their own space “for a reason, after all”. Dick had rolled his eyes, and Jason had snarked back at the youngest of them, but Dick had also given Damian the benefit of the doubt and explained to him what was going on. The three eldest had been expecting Damian to laugh or make some kind of a spiteful comment, but much to everyone’s surprise, he’d simply stared back at Dick for a couple of moments before he sighed and walked out of the room, only to come back a couple of minutes later with a stack of blankets and shirts and artifacts of his own, because “if you’re going to do this, do it right, you absolute imbeciles”.

Dick and Jason had exchanged raised eyebrows at that, but even Jason was strapped for what they were supposed to do, and Damian seemed pretty set in his way, so they had just shrugged and let Damian go about rearranging everything in the nest as they finalized the rest of their plan.

Neither Cass nor Steph were anywhere to be found, and that made sense, considering they were supposed to be somewhere in the Amazon, wrestling pythons or panthers or whatever it was that two Lady Bats did whenever they weren’t babysitting their male counterparts, and Jason and Dick eventually ruled out picking up the phone and calling them before they got a chance to talk to Tim. Jason had considered it because the more people they had around to keep an eye on Tim, the better, and Cass had always been particularly adept at keeping Tim calm and doing whatever Tim needed to do for Tim’s own good, but even under the best of circumstances it would have been hard to contact the girls on their satellite phone, and Bruce didn’t want to risk anyone intercepting the call with what was at stake. As it was, they’d already deprived Tim of breaking the news to his brothers and his father figure (as inadvertent as the reveal had been), and Jason didn’t want to take that joy away from Tim anymore than they already had. If the girls were closer—at home or at least on the same continent—his answer might have been different, but as it was, he thought they’d made the right decision, and nobody was in favor of putting off telling Tim any longer than it would take him to get home from Wayne Enterprises that evening.

Babs was a little different. She was still at home in Gotham, but when Bruce rang her to garner her advice, she hadn’t answered, and Bruce had been willing to leave it at that. They’d always had the option of calling her ‘emergency’ number, and Dick had mentioned it, but in the end, if she hadn’t answered her personal phone it was for a reason, and neither Jason nor Dick had tried to argue with Bruce.

The only questions that had remained after all of the conversations had been over with were Conner and Clark, and just about the only thing Jason could agree with others on there was that if Clark hadn’t already heard them talking and come to investigate, he was probably busy as well, and none of the three of them felt like reaching out to him without consulting Tim first.

Not with how the two had left off the last time they’d spoken.

None of the family had thought the conversation was going to go well, but Tim’s reaction was exceeding even the wildest of their predictions—and not in a good way. They’d waited until after Tim had dropped his briefcase and his daily notes into the office beside his room and showered, before Bruce had directed him down to the Media Room. Dinner had been served without mention of what was going on, but Tim had known the second he’d stepped into the room that something was off because of all of the things that had been gathered around in the nest, and it had done little in the end to help calm him once the news was out.

Jason had gone about mentioning the change as gently as he could—the blood work report already folded up in his hands for when Tim asked—but Tim had rejected the notion as soon as it had been brought up, and little had changed in the time that had passed since. He’d consented to reading the test results instead of soliciting them, and listened to the theories that Dick and Bruce had concocted with a patience that bordered on politeness, but Tim had struck each and every single one of them down with an almost chilling accuracy as they’d been presented to him, and things had only gone down hill from there. Dick and Bruce kept trying to get him to see sense (because even though Tim kept poking holes in their theories, he hadn’t been able to offer up any indisputable evidence that he _wasn’t_ pregnant, either), and Tim kept getting more and more agitated, the more that Dick and Bruce tried to argue with him and the less time they gave to each of his counter arguments in their own mounting frustrations.

“Look, Tim,” Bruce continued to try to reason with the omega, regardless of the fact that he was getting nowhere. “I know you keep saying that, but the numbers don’t lie—“

“I don’t care what the numbers say,” Tim responded, annoyance and frustration clear in every inch of his being as he sat even farther forward in his seat. “I know my body, and I know Kryptonian biology! It’s impossible! Kon’s sperm and my eggs aren’t harmonious! They haven’t been from the first time we got together, and nothing has changed since then. I’m not pregnant!”

“Yes, Timothy!” Dick butted in, surging forward to grab at Tim’s arm in a desperate attempt to try to make him see sense. “Yes, you are! It’s not a bad thing! You just—you have a baby growing inside of you and you’re going to be a parent in a couple of months! It’s okay! It’s—“

“No, it’s not!” Tim jerked back out of Dick’s grasp, tipping Dick off balance and sending him to the floor as he did so. “I’m not…I’m not _with child_ , Dick; and even if I was, it wouldn’t be a good thing!”

“Tim—” Dick choked out, staring up at his little brother, even as Jason dropped down to his knees at Dick’s side and wrapped a protective arm around Dick’s torso and instinctively pulled Dick back to his chest as he shot a warning snarl over Dick’s head at Tim. Jason lost track of the conversation for a moment, as Tim turned his attention back to Bruce, and Bruce kept talking, but Jason knew that he should have stuck to his guns and insisted that they wait for Conner to get home so that the alpha could have helped calm Tim down.

“Look at the data, Tim!” Bruce more or less yelled as he shoved the folded and crumpled test results under Tim’s nose, yet again. “Look at it! It’s right there in front of you! Even if your hormone levels were normal, the number of Kryptonian Cells floating through your blood stream is off of the charts! Not once have we ever recorded levels this high in a human being—“

“That hardly means anything—“ Tim looked like he was seconds away from pulling his own hair out as he gestured with his hands and knocked the paper away.

“Yes, it does!” Bruce insisted, ignoring the set in his second youngest son’s jaw and the steel in his vibrant blue eyes as he did so. “It means everything! You are pregnant, Tim! Pregnant! And nothing you say or do is going to change that—“

“ _Father_ ,” Damian interrupted him with a sharp bark of his voice, and a petty part of Jason derived a sick sort of pleasure from the way that Bruce’s shoulders stiffened—even as his own did the same, and his lips pulled back over his teeth even further.

“What?” Bruce rounded on his youngest expectantly, but Damian stayed calm as Tim’s fists clenched tightly against his own thighs.

“While, I agree that you are right, and Timothy has absolutely lost what little of a mind I thought he had by rejecting this idea so vehemently, yelling isn’t going to do anybody any good,” Damian kept his arms crossed tightly over his chest as he made his way around Bruce to Tim’s side, not looking away from Bruce once as he did so—not even when he had to step around Dick’s head—and Jason watched him move with his free hand on the hilt of the knife on his waistband. “This latest development would be emotional and fear inducing for even the healthiest and most well-endowed person, not to mention all of the added risk factors that Timothy faces due to the child’s potential parentage. Timothy does bring up some good points, and I think we would all be better served by taking a moment to sit down and breathe before we reconvene and agree to actually _listen_ to each other, as opposed to deciding who is right based on how loud they can state their supposed ‘facts’.”

Bruce obviously didn’t like Damian’s plan—neither did Jason nor Dick, if Jason was being completely honest—but Damian didn’t seem to care. He just sat himself down on the couch beside Tim and glared up at Bruce until his father threw his hands up in the air and walked away—putting a good ten or so feet between himself and Tim, before he started pacing himself a circuit over top of the carpet and drug his hands back through his hair as a way to help release some of his own frustration.

Things were quiet after that, aside from Bruce’s foot steps and Tim’s frustrated noises as he slumped back into the couch cushions and rubbed his hands over his face, and after a moment or two of looking between the two of them, Jason turned his attention back down to the alpha in his arms and slid his knife the rest of the way back into its sheath.

“You okay, babe?” he asked, running his thumb over the soft cotton of Dick’s t-shirt.

“Yeah, Jaybird—I’m fine,” Dick gave a small smile and nodded his head, reaching up to run his fingers overtop of the back of Jason’s hand soothingly, and Jason had to resist the urge to keen as Dick’s baby blues flicked up to his. “He just took me by surprise is all.”

“Are you sure?” Jason forced his eyes away from Dick’s in order to look over the rest of his fiancé’s face for cuts or scrapes or bruises. “Because you fell, and I’d hate for you to have—“

“Really, little wing,” Dick’s thumb brushed over the skin of Jason’s cheek bone, and Jason nuzzled into the gesture and relaxed before he could stop himself. “I’m okay.”

“Okay,” Jason found himself whispering, shifting his grip on Dick so he could bring the alpha closer to kiss at his lips. “Okay, Dickie-bird. You’re okay.”

“Hmm,” Dick gave a happily little pleased sound as he kissed Jason back, and Jason let himself relax for a moment before he let out a small sigh and pulled away.

“C’mon,” he held out a hand, and Dick took it immediately. Jason hoisted both of the two them back up to their feet, hesitating one more second just to make sure that Dick was moving okay, before he dropped Dick’s hand and reached down to grab the edge of the coffee table and dragged it a couple of feet closer to the couch. Dick kept his distance as Jason politely plopped himself down on the edge of the table and faced Tim, but he did step close enough that he could rest a hand on Jason’s shoulder after Jason had gotten himself situated, and Jason was thankful for that as he sat forward with his forearms rested across his knees. “Talk to me, Tim.”

“I just don’t understand it, Jay,” Tim sighed, pushing the heels of his palms into his eyes. “I just—I don’t—“

“I know, baby bird,” Jason soothed calmly. “I know. I’ll admit I’m a little confused myself, but the numbers don’t lie. At the very least, _something_ is going on with you—you realize that, right?”

“I—yes,” Tim nodded his head, his eyes flicking back open as his hands flopped back down into his lap. “Obviously, there’s something wrong somewhere, but I just don’t know what it _is_ —“

“So, talk me through it,” Jason offered, and gesticulated as much as he could with his upper arms supporting some of his weight. “When was your last heat?”

“About two months before yours—like always,” Tim answered, his frustration clear in his voice.

“Okay,” Jason stayed calm, though, knowing that was the key to calming Tim down. “And I take it all of your blood work has come back normal until now?”

“Yes,” Tim nodded his head, crossing his arms over his chest. “Everything up until the blood samples I gave this morning before I left for work have been normal—urine samples, too.”

“So, questions number one and two if you’re pregnant are how far along are you, and how you conceived off of your cycle—”

It wasn’t completely unheard of for omegas to become pregnant when mated outside of their heats, but it wasn’t exactly common either, and Jason wasn’t sure how Kryptonian DNA and semen factored into that equation.

“—But before we get to all of that,” Jason pushed on quickly when he saw Tim open his mouth to argue. “You’re on an insane birth control regiment, aren’t you?”

“I—yes,” Tim closed his mouth and nodded his head, as Jason clearly surprised him with the slight change of subject. “I have to stay on oral because the implanted ones make me sick, but Bruce and I recalculate my dosage every cycle.”

“Okay,” Jason nodded his head as well, quickly thinking over the possible sources of error that presented him. “Are you sure that you didn’t miscalculate or just flat out miss a dose in the last couple of weeks or months?”

“No,” Tim shook his head, but some of the tension had eased out of his shoulders. “I’m absolutely positive. Alfred doses out my medication and I have a container I keep it in where each pill of my cycle is sectioned out where I can see whether I’ve taken it or not at the end of the day, and besides all of that—Kon can smell when I haven’t taken them. He won’t even kiss me if he comes home and I haven’t taken my meds yet.”

If there was one thing that Tim could have said that Jason wouldn’t have questioned, it was _that_. Jason, of all people, understood overbearing and over concerned alphas better than most people gave him credit for, and as much as it might have irked him at times, Kon worshipped the ground that Tim walked on and would never willingly do anything that he knew Tim wouldn’t approve of, and touching Tim while Tim wasn’t one-hundred-percent protected against unexpected pregnancies was definitely something Tim wouldn’t approve of.

“Okay, so question number three if you’re pregnant is figuring out how you got pregnant while you were on birth control,” Jason had a harder time letting that question go as he mulled over possible theories in his head. At first glace, he would have put his money on Kryptonian semen with how anal Bruce and Tim were when it came to medication regiments, but there was always the possibility of a bad batch of birth control. “I’m not an expert on such things, but I think you should probably come off of it until we get this figured out, okay? I agree that your symptoms are vague, and we won’t be able to confirm all of this one way or another without some more testing, but between the increased levels of Kryptonian Cells and the particular mix of hormones you have floating around in your system right now, the best working theory we have is that you’re pregnant, and I think we should err on the side of extreme caution until we know more.”

“Yeah, okay, I’ll come off of my birth control if you want, but I’m still telling you I can’t be pregnant—the numbers don’t support it—“

“Tim, you’ve seen the blood results yourself—“

“Not those numbers,” Tim snapped irritably at being cut off as he waved a dismissive hand towards the paper still folded across his left knee.

“What numbers, then?” Jason furrowed his eyebrows in confusion.

“Kon and I’s fertility numbers.”

“Your fertility…numbers?” Jason questioned, still not understanding.

“Numbers, chance, likelihood, whatever words you want to use,” Tim huffed. “The probability of a successful combination of Kon and I’s DNA. Not even factoring in the complications of me trying to carry a Kryptonian child, there is no factor of compatibility between Kryptonian’s and humans—even less so between Kon and I. It is quite literally impossible for our gametes to combine and form a zygote—“

“How do you know that for sure?” Jason cut Tim’s ranting off, even more confused by Tim’s explanation than he had been before Tim started defending his position. “Where are you getting your data from?”

“You—I,” Tim struggled for a moment before he finally just huffed. “Give me my tablet.”

“Timmy, I don’t think that’s a good idea—“

“My tablet, _Dick_ ,” Tim snapped, looking past Jason at the alpha who had tried to argue with him, and the hand on Jason’s shoulder disappeared as Jason listed to Dick sigh, before it was back a couple of seconds later as Dick’s left hand passed the requested tablet over to Tim. “Thank you.”

Tim’s temper had calmed some with the acquiesce to his demand, and a couple of seconds later he was shoving the tablet underneath of Jason’s nose, and Jason was leaning back a bit as he reached up to take it.

“What am I looking at?” he asked, immediately picking up words like “sample”; “insufficient match”; “terminated”; and “failure” as he scrolled through the various reports and notes and graphs that awaited him there.

““A Complete Genetic Work-Up on the Compatibility of Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne and Kon-El Kent in Regards to their Abilities to Reproduce”,” Tim rattled off, and Jason forwent rolling his eyes in favor of continuing to read over the file in front of him—ignoring Tim’s dictated conclusions in favor of reading over the data itself. “There were five anonymous samples to compare the data against—both caste and beta—as a control, and they all supported the deductions that Kon would never be able to produce an offspring without genetic alteration, but the study sample was too small to say for sure.”

“When did you do all of this?” Jason vaguely registered Tim’s words and their implications in the back of his mind, but he mostly ignored them in favor of being dumb-founded by the sheer amount of time and effort that Tim had put into the experimentation and research behind his report.

“About a year and a half ago,” Tim answered, his body language falling in on itself as he melted back into his seat, and Jason’s head snapped up immediately. Tim was looking down at his hands, his fingers playing with themselves as he refused to meet anybody’s eyes for more than a couple of seconds as he went on, and Jason watched him intently. “We had a…there was a…Kon and I had a scare, right back after I let him mark me. My Kryptonian Cell Concentration Test came back abnormally high…not quite as high as this one did, but still. The day that Alfred took our samples, I’d been called in to clean out a burning apartment building earlier in the night and I was a little dehydrated. Alfred used an oral swab for what tests he could so that he wouldn’t have to take so much blood, and the sample that he ended up taking was…contaminated.”

Tim’s cheeks burned red, and he’d gone from only looking up every couple of seconds to not looking up at _all_ , and Jason didn’t want to ask, but he knew he needed to anyway.

“Contaminated?”

“Kon had swung by for dinner because we were still going through withdrawal, and you know how I get kind of sore after my heats, and Kon just smells so _good_ when he’s still rutting and—“

“Yeah, okay, Tim—I get it,” Jason cut Tim off as gently as he could, because he could put two and two together, and if Tim didn’t want to say it out loud, Jason wasn’t going to make him. “The sample wasn’t viable.”

“I guess that’s a good way to put it,” Tim gave a half-little tilt of his head as he accepted Jason’s explanation before he went on. “But either way, it didn’t take us very long to figure out what had happened—well, I mean it _did_ , but not the not-pregnant part. Alfred took a blood sample because it would be more accurate, and…yeah… That whole misunderstanding got Kon and I talking a couple of weeks later, and I did the testing that you see there, but no matter what I did…everything came back negative. Bruce already knows that. I can’t—I _shouldn’t_ be pregnant.”

“I get what you’re saying there, Tim, but—“

“If you’re so sure that you shouldn’t be pregnant, than why are you so careful with your birth control?” Dick spoke up from behind Jason again, confusion clear in his voice, and Jason turned just the slightest bit so he could see the alpha over his shoulder.

“Have you met me?” Tim’s voice was thick with sarcasm, but that at least, Jason knew Dick could handle, and as loathe as Jason was to get Tim worked up again, Jason also knew it might be good for him to blow off a little more steam given the circumstances. “I’m kind of neurotic.”

“Yes, Timothy,” Dick drawled. “I know that, but—“

“Hey, guys!” Jason stiffened as Conner called from the door, and instantly spun around on the table so that he could look at the Kryptonian. The kid was still in his Superboy shirt—fresh off a shift on the Watchtower with the League, and beaming like he was the sun itself—and Jason cursed internally. “What’s…up?”

“Conner,” Bruce was the first one to greet the young alpha in a clipped tone as Conner stepped into the room, and Jason thanked every God he’d ever known that Conner picked up on the tension in the room and stopped as his eyes fell on Tim’s form from across the room. Jason had another half-second at most to take in the resulting blanch on Conner’s face before Dick’s arms were wrapping up underneath of his ribcage and Jason was being lifted up off of the table as Tim hissed.

_“You,”_ Jason floundered for a moment with his feet, unprepared for the sudden change in position, but he didn’t miss Tim’s eyes narrowing as they locked onto Conner’s.

“What?” Conner asked, as Jason got his legs back underneath of himself. “Me? What about me? Why are we all looking at me—“

“ _You_ did this to me,” Tim let out a feral snarl as he sat forward in his seat, and Damian relinquished his spot at Tim’s side in favor of slinking over behind Bruce where it was indisputably safer for the young alpha.

“No, I didn’t,” Kon shook his head, looking the very picture of guilty as he took a step back towards the door, but froze in place as a growl ripped its way out of Tim’s chest.

“ _Yes_ , you _did_ ,” Tim pushed on, sitting up straighter and flexing his muscles until he was the biggest he could be (which, admittedly, wasn’t very big, but terrifying nonetheless). “This is most definitely your fault, Conner Kent. You’re the one with the dick and the knot who insisted upon shoving them up my ass every chance you got. You’re the one with the Kryptonian Cells fucking up my system. You’re the one with the…with the…with the… Wait a second… No… You couldn’t have…you didn’t…”

Tim went on for a second, razor-sharp accusations flying off of his tongue as he continued to flex himself tighter and tighter until suddenly he was trailing off and his eyes and his pupils were blowing wide in tandem as he stumbled over his words.

“Timmy?” Jason asked tentatively, but Tim acted like he hadn’t even heard him as he continued to study the alpha in front of him, and all of a sudden Jason realized what Tim was thinking and his jaw fell open as he followed Tim’s gaze towards Conner. “Timmy, what—“

“No…” Jason heard Tim whisper, but Jason refused to turn around and look back at him as Conner scuffed his toes down into the carpet and refused to look up at Tim and Jason swore again.

_“Shit.”_

“It can’t…you would have…no,” Tim continued to ramble, his words growing louder and more sure of themselves as they went, but Jason knew that they didn’t matter anymore. That nothing any body could say would stop what was only inevitable. “You would have told me. Tell me it’s not true. _Tell me you would have told me, Kon-El._ ”

“I can’t,” was the only answer Kon could give, clearly choking on the words and the tears as he did, but it didn’t matter. Tim was already halfway across the room with a piece of Kryptonite in one hand and a bō staff in the other.

_“You bastard!”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When two omegas’ cycles “synch” they trade off months in heat instead of falling into heat around the same week like most animals do. This is a survival instinct so that there are as many able-bodied persons around to protect them while they are vulnerable.  
> A “cycle” as it’s used here, refers to the entire three-month “ordeal” that omegas go through in between each of their heats and not just a female human month or the 4-5 days an omega is in heat.  
> A note on Kryptonian Cell levels in humans: it is my head canon that Kryptonians had different biological make ups than humans, and therefore a scientist can tell how much exposure a person has had to a Kryptonian by measuring levels of different compounds/chemicals in their bodies. For example, a person who merely stands near a Kryptonian probably wouldn’t have measurable levels because no body fluids would be exchanged and there wouldn’t be enough skin/skin exposure, but somebody who lived with one on a daily basis (like Ma) might show slightly increased levels as sweated chemicals were transferred via things the Kryptonians have touched, and somebody who partook in…relations with one (Tim) would probably show comparatively high levels on a regular basis as their body absorbed and broke down exchanged body fluids. More on how this affects Tim in regards to the pregnancy to come.


	3. Chapter Two

“Are you okay?” Alfred asked, polite and cordial—if not a little suspicious—as he held a glass of ice water down to Kon.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Kon took the water from him with a nod of his head and quickly took a sip of the proffered liquid. The burn from the Kryptonite lingered, and the blistering pain of Kon’s bones reknitting from the damage that Tim had been able to reap was nauseating at best, but Kon mostly ignored them (and the fact that it had taken all four of the other vigilantes in the room to pull Tim off of him once they’d snapped out of their own various levels of shock) in favor of the conversation he knew was about to come. “Thank you for asking—“

“Oh, who cares about that,” Tim snapped from across the room where he sat beside Bruce on the couch, arms crossed over his chest and one leg tucked up underneath of himself as he pouted and glared daggers across the room that ripped through Kon as if what was going on actually _was_ his fault. “How did you know I was pregnant and why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

“Timothy,” Bruce reprimanded him for several reasons, but Tim turned his scowl on him and Bruce instinctively shrank back before his shoulders stiffened and he forced himself to stand his ground.

“I am twenty-two years old, Bruce,” Tim’s words were laced with acid, and a weaker man would have crumpled under the weight of them. “I am more than capable of deciding whether a situation warrants the use of ‘inappropriate’ words or not; I am more than capable of asking the sire of my pup questions; and I am most definitely entitled to the answers of those questions. I don’t know how, and I don’t know when, but my alpha knew before he walked in that door this evening that I was pregnant, and I want to know how. I want to know how, and I want to know why _the fuck_ he thought it was okay to _not_ tell me.”

“I didn’t know you were pregnant—not for sure, at least,” Kon turned the conversation back to himself, feeling the need to at least absolve himself of that, and he resisted the urge to wince as Tim’s head and glower snapped back around towards himself. “I figured out a couple of weeks ago that something was wrong _,_ but I _did not_ know that you were pregnant.”

Tim didn’t believe Kon, that much was obvious in the way that he continued to just sit with his arms crossed over his chest and his back ram-rod straight, but Kon had been just as shocked by Jason’s post-Kryptonite explanation as he imagined the rest of the room had been when they’d first heard the news, and he was still working through processing all of the ramifications of it.

“I…the thought had occurred to me, and I did look into it a little bit,” Kon admitted, because that was true, too. He’d entertained the question for maybe all of twenty minutes back when he’d first noticed Tim’s uterine cavity expanding more than usual, but he’d quickly dismissed the idea when Tim’s next set of blood work came back normal. “But I’ve never encountered an omega so early in their pregnancy—at least not one I’ve had any reason to walk around x-raying—and the changes I’ve been seeing…they could be from _anything_ , including you just having some kind of a benign cyst or an abnormal cycle, and I didn’t want to bother you with something so trivial. I thought about bringing it up, but all of your regular testing has been coming back normal. So, I thought—I figured that I was just being paranoid. I went to Clark about it, once, in between rounds of blood work, but when he looked at your torso, he wasn’t able to see anything because all of the changes are still so vague, and thought that the fatigue and the clinginess that I was describing was just you being tired from doing too much and me overreacting. He wanted me to say something to you about it, but—“

“But nobody tries to tell Tim that he’s doing too much unless they’re willing to give up the use of one of their limbs?” Jason offered with a small snort from where he was leaning against the wall, nursing a four-inch finger nail scratch down his forearm, and Kon looked to him, studying the quirk of his eyebrow for a moment before he risked agreeing.

“Exactly,” Tim’s glare sharpened for a moment, and Kon held his tongue in favor of giving him the chance to respond, but instead of saying anything, Tim just shrugged one of his shoulders in a, ‘yeah, that’s pretty much true, what are you going to do about it?’ type of gesture a couple of minutes later before he returned to his previous state of silent judgment, thus Kon went on. “So, I told him no, and I thought he’d dropped it, but when he came over to look Tim over a couple of days later—“

“He cornered Tim at a family dinner and tried to tell him that he was a mated omega now, and that an omega’s place was to sit at home waiting for his alpha?” Dick’s eyes widened in realization before they shrunk back into a much more contemplative gaze, and Kon knew he was remembering the horrible fight that had happened before Kon and Clark had left on that Diplomatic Mission.

“More or less,” Kon nodded his head again, looking downwards as he took another sip of his water. From his stand point, Clark hadn’t been nearly as…harsh in his wording as Tim had heard, but regardless of his opinion on the subject, it still hadn’t been Clark’s place to have such a conversation with Tim, and Clark most definitely shouldn’t have implied that it was easier for Clark, Dick, and Kon to handle the burdens of their mantles because they were omegas. “I didn’t know he was going to do it, and if I had, I never would have gone to him in the first place, but he saw that I was concerned, and that I wasn’t willing to say anything because we thought it was just Tim overworking, and he didn’t see anything when he x-rayed you, so I didn’t push the uterine cavity thing because I thought it was just me, and—“

“That’s all wonderful, Kon, and I appreciate the explanations, really, I do, but they don’t change the facts of what’s going on,” Tim cut Kon off, and Kon looked up to see him still sitting on the couch—all uncertainty gone as he once again let the anger burn through him. “ _How_ did this happen and _why_ has it taken us this long to figure it out? We haven’t shared a heat in months, and I’ve been on one form of birth control or another since the week you came back to life. This doesn’t make sense. No matter how you slice it, this shouldn’t be happening. There is no physical way that I can be pregnant right now.”

“I know that, Tim,” Kon switched gears, but he doubted that his pleas would have much of an affect on Tim—knew that no body would be able to get Tim to see any kind of sense until there was a literal pup in his arms and paternal DNA tests proving the child was genetically theirs because Kon’s omega was just too damn _logical_ sometimes. “I know this makes no sense—and that was part of the reason why I didn’t push the issue with you. Why I thought I was overreacting. But it is what it is, and I don’t see why that’s a bad thing—“

“You don’t see why that’s a bad thing?” Tim threw Kon’s words back at him without hesitation, and Kon physically braced himself for whatever was about to come. “ _You don’t see why that’s a bad thing?_ ”

“No, Timothy—I don’t—“

“Conner Kent, I am pregnant!” Tim yelled as he pushed himself up from his seat. “There is a tiny little half-alien/half-human fetus wiggling itself around inside of my body and it’s only going to get bigger!”

The rest of the occupants of the room tensed and reached for various hidden weapons around their persons in anticipation of Tim attacking again, but Kon forced himself to stay in his seat and kept his mouth shut as Tim started gesticulating and pacing around the room.

“I’m not ready to be a parent!” he seethed. “The media is going to have a field day with this! What the fuck is Red Robin supposed to do while Tim Drake is stuck in a fucking hospital giving birth to a crazy alien-baby? As far as the public is concerned, I’m an unclaimed omega. Pretty soon, none of my clothes are going to fit! This is going to be impossible to hide! I’m going to be gigantic! How long am I going to be out of commission? I don’t know how many hits I’ve taken to my abdomen over the last couple of weeks and who knows what poisons I’ve been exposed to while I’ve been out at night! Where the hell are we going to live? Gotham is no place to raise a child! Is this thing even human? Is it Kryptonian? We know fucking nothing about this, Kon!”

“If you were the one that was pregnant, we would at least have a pretty good chance of knowing that it wouldn’t wake up one day and rip you to shreds, but hell, we can’t even come close to that with me!” one of Tim’s hands went up to his hair, and Kon cursed the temporary loss of his TTK because he had no way of reaching out and comforting Tim without actually reaching out and touching him, and Tim wouldn’t accept such a gesture until he’d burnt his panic out of his system, so all Kon could do was sit and watch as Tim worked himself up higher and higher. “As it is, normal human babies can break ribs and cause organ damage if they’re big enough, but what about a super powered, partial Kryptonian freak? Are they going to go to move one day and accidentally put a five-inch tear through my abdomen? Are they going to sense their umbilical cord wrapping around their leg or their arm and rip it in half and suffocate themselves by accident? What about once they’re born? What if they turn out to be as unstable as all of the other clones before you? You got lucky, Kon. _Lucky_. All of the other clones before you died or went totally insane until they were finally put down, and do I have to remind you of the person who finally ended up putting down Prime, Kon—because I can assure you Kon-El Kent, that only one person in the universe can currently boast to killing a Superman clone by stabbing a kryptonite sword through their heart, and It’s. Not. _You_. It’s not you, and it’s not Cassie, and it’s not Bruce, or Clark, or Diana, or even Dick or Jason, Conner. It’s me. The tiny ass little omega who was stupid enough to let you shove your knot up his ass, and if there is one thing that I am completely certain of, it’s that I have no fucking _desire_ to put my child down, Kon. I don’t care how much of a homicidal little maniac he is. I don’t. Want. To do it. I don’t. But I’m going to have to be the one to do it, if it comes down to that, because nobody else is going to be able stomach it or manage it or be able to…be able to…shit.”

“What is it?” Kon was up out of his seat and tensed down into a battle stance before he’d even realized that he was moving, his glass of water on the ground by his feet and long forgotten. Tim had been going strong, barely breathing in between words as he yelled at Kon until suddenly he’d trailed off and sworn under his breath, and that wasn’t _good._ “Talk to me, love.”

“Kryptonite…” Tim answered quietly, eyes unfocused and faraway as his hands hovered limply over his stomach.

“Timmy?” Jason pushed himself up from the wall.

_“Kryptonite!”_ Tim hissed before he was turned and out of sight, a look of pure terror on his face as he streaked through the house towards the Cave.

“Tim!” Dick called after him, rocketing up from his seat on the carpet as Alfred gasped a, “Master Timothy,”, and Damian questioned, “Drake?”; but Kon was already half way down the hall.

Tim was at the bottom of the stairs to the Cave by the time that Kon caught up to him, and it was barely a couple of heartbeats later that the two were across the floor as Tim pulled frantically at the wands and the wires for one of the ultrasound machines (if not a little violently).

“Idiot,” he was whispering under his breath, but Kon wasn’t foolish enough to hope that he was referring to Kon instead of himself. “Stupid, stupid, _idiot_. How could I have been so reckless—“

“Tim,” Kon reached out to grab Tim’s shoulder, but wasn’t surprised or very offended when Tim swatted his hand away as the machine whirled to life in front of them.

“Shirt,” he ordered as he squeezed blue gel onto the wand he’d deemed acceptable for whatever he was trying to do, and Kon closed his fingers around the fabric and tore it away from Tim’s body without hesitation.

“Master Timothy, I beg of you—“

_“Rrr,”_ instead of responding to Alfred’s concern with words, another snarl ripped its way out of Tim’s throat, and Kon could feel the rest of the family halt in their places across the Cave at the sound of it. Without thinking, Kon shifted himself in between his mate and his mate’s pack and watched worriedly as Tim started jabbing at buttons on the still warming up machine.

It took a minute for the screen to finish loading, an error message blinking where the picture of Tim’s insides should have been, but after ten tense seconds of Tim just scowling at it, the proper image popped up and Tim immediately set to work—guiding the wand over his pelvis with his right hand as he poked at buttons and fiddled with nobs on the console with his left.

Kon had no idea what Tim was doing. He’d tried his best over the years to avoid the ultrasound machines in the Towers and in the Cave because they typically meant some kind of organ damage, and there was nothing that Kon could do to help with that, but oh, so very slowly, Tim’s movements over the keyboard became calmer and calmer and he moved the wand less and less, and after what felt like forever, the ultrasound’s screen lit up in two giant blobs of red and blue with yellow and green edging. Tim inhaled a sharp breath of relief in the heartbeat that followed as his shoulders relaxed and he just stared at the screen, and Kon knew he’d found whatever he’d been looking for.

“Tim?” he tried again, softer and right up close to Tim’s ear, Tim’s hair tickling at his lips as he did so, and this time Tim leaned back into the hands on his hips and reached up to lay his free hand over one of Kon’s instead of trying to bat them away.

“It’s…” Tim choked on the word as his eyes tracked over the screen again and again with the bright pulses of color around what Kon could only assume was his womb, and he cleared his throat and wet his lips with his slender tongue before he tried again (and wasn’t that just distracting and teasing Kon beyond what was fair). “It’s…I’m pregnant, Kon. We’re having a baby. Me pulling the Kryptonite earlier didn’t…it’s…it’s alive, Kon. It’s still there.”

“I see that, love,” Kon found himself smiling as he leaned down to press a kiss into the fluff of Tim’s hair, thankful that Tim had finally calmed down enough to let Kon near him again. “Or—at least, I think I do. The screen kind of just looks like a bunch of black and white and color to me, but I’m sure it means something to you, and—hey!”

Kon jumped as Tim’s free hand collided with his thigh, but he quickly dissolved into a fit of giggles and nuzzled down into the bend of Tim’s neck when Tim mumbled something under his breath about “ruined moments” and “getting knocked up by an idiot”.

“I’m just being honest,” Kon let go of Tim’s hips in favor of reaching up and wrapping his arms around Tim’s slender shoulders in a pseudo-hug.

“And I appreciate that,” Tim gave a soft sigh as he reached up to squeeze at Kon’s forearm with his left hand—right up at the meaty part near Kon’s elbow where Kon knew Tim just loved—and Kon settled back down as he looked back up at the screen.

“Would you mind telling me what I’m looking at so I can share in this moment of happiness with you?” he let his right hand fall from Tim’s shoulders so he could slip the wand out of Tim’s right hand, and Tim relinquished control of it without a fight as he reached up to start readjusting buttons on the machine.

“Of course, I wouldn’t,” Tim hummed, and Kon gave his shoulders a small squeeze in response as he watched the colors disappear from the screen, leaving the image in black and grainy white once again. “Just give me a second to find…”

His nimble fingers wiggled their way back underneath of Kon’s on the wand, and Kon was confused for a moment, until Tim pushed it back to his skin after dragging it through more of the gel.

“…Here we go!” he declared softly as the image from before more or less popped back up on the screen, and Kon retook the wand so Tim could go back to fiddling with the buttons on the console. “You know how an ultrasound works, right? Electrical impulses are manipulated into a sound wave through a transducer and then channeled into the body via an array in the wand. Those sound waves bounce off of various tissues in the body like muscles and blood vessels and organ walls back into another set of arrays in the wand. Those second arrays revert the sound waves back into electrical impulses that the computer can then interpret through the strength and speed of the altered impulses, and presents that data as an image that we as humans can understand. This up here at the top is the first layer of my skin where the probe is at and everything underneath of it is a sideways view of the tissues underneath. So—like—here are my abs, and this black space is my bladder, and this is what it would look like if you cut me in half at my waist and looked down at the remains from where my head was. You follow me so far?”

“Basically,” Kon nodded his head against the side of Tim’s dutifully as Tim squeezed his forearm again, and it wasn’t a lie. He didn’t exactly understand all of the technical terms that Tim used to describe the process, but he vaguely understood that an ultrasound turned sound waves into an image that humans could interpret (like sonar), and he could follow what Tim was saying about how the image was oriented as he pointed to all of the various landmarks he mentioned (again—just like sonar). “That blob thing-y there is the scar from when Ra’s caught you across the stomach with that sword, right?”

“Yes!” Tim beamed, squirming around within the safe confines of Kon’s arms excitedly, and Kon found the corners of his mouth pulling upwards again as Tim chanced a quick look up at him out of the corners of his eyes. “We’re about two inches up from the bottom of it. Can you tell where we are from side-to-side?”

“About an inch over from your spine?” Kon barely registered his own words through the blue of Tim’s eyes.

“Yes,” Tim nodded his head two or three times in quick succession before he focused his attention back on the screen with an anticipatory energy that kept him fidgeting in his Kon’s arms. “Bury the probe in just a bit farther towards my spine.”

Kon hesitated a second just to watch Tim—to watch the way that his eyes flicked over the screen eagerly and his entire being just _thrummed_ with pride—before his own eyes flicked back up to the screen, and he did as he was told.

The degree of changes in the image was surprising. Even as Kon only applied the smallest increments of pressure he could manage without his TTK to guide him, the tissues scrunched upwards towards the top of the screen significantly as Tim’s skin gave underneath of the weight of Kon’s hand. Deeper tissues came into view underneath of them, though—as Kon suspected they would—and it was kind of fascinating to watch. Kon only had a moment to wonder what the latest void of black was before Tim pushed a button again, and suddenly the screen was enveloped back in pulsing colors.

“You see all of these colors?” Tim peeked up at Kon again as he pointed towards the ball of red and blue.

“Yes?” Kon furrowed his eyebrows at the screen as he tried to make sense of the fluid filled organ underneath.

“Do you know what they mean?” Tim’s voice had dropped down until it was all soft and raspy and intimate, and Kon’s breath caught in his chest as he realized what he was looking at.

“That’s…”

“The red shows blood leading into my uterine cavity, while the blue shows blood that’s flowing away,” Tim explained, eyes never once leaving Kon’s face as he reached forward to hit the same button on the machine again to make the colors go away. “It’s not—they’re not a guarantee that the fetus is alive, or that it’s healthy, or anything, but…my body still thinks it’s alive and there are no serious abnormalities in the blood flow or any blood clots in the veins surrounding it that would indicate that the fetus or my uterine cavity are suffering any kind of undo stress, which are two very good signs.”

“You see all of this ‘free space’ underneath of them when I take the color away?” Tim continued to watch Kon as he reached up and started pointing to things on the screen. “That’s called the gestational sac and this circular line of white here is called the yolk sac. They’re both filled with amniotic fluid and blood and other fluids that will eventually turn into the amniotic sac and nourish and protect the fetus. It’s still a little early to say for certain, the embryo is small and uteruses rarely have staunchly smooth walls—not to mention how bad uterine cavities can be—but…my guess would be that this little bit up here is probably the part that will actually turn into something.”

It was quiet for a couple of seconds as Tim watched Kon, and Kon knew that he was waiting for Kon to say something, but Kon couldn’t find it in himself to look away from the little white flap that Tim had pointed it.

“That’s…that’s our baby?” Kon finally managed to tear his eyes away from the machine and spoke after a solid minute of silence, and Tim beamed up at him shyly when he did (and seriously, how did Tim even manage to do that?).

“Yes,” Tim nodded his head, and if it was possible, his smile got even brighter. “That’s our son or daughter.”

The next thing Kon knew, he was dropping the wand from his hand and spinning Tim around so that Kon could pull him close and kiss the hell out of him. Bruce would give him a hard time about it later—and Alfred, if the wand broke as it clanked to the ground—but Kon couldn’t find it in himself to care as Tim made a little preening noise and started running his fingers through Kon’s hair and over his scalp.

The kisses seemed to go on forever—Tim’s lips moving and sliding against Kon’s as Kon held him close and kissed him back—until Tim finally pulled back enough that he could glare down at Kon, and when had he crawled up Kon’s body like that? Kon most definitely _did not_ remember that happening (not that he was complaining though).

“I’m still mad at you,” Tim whispered, his fingers still working over Kon’s scalp in hypnotic strokes. “Like—what you did was not okay, and my fears and concerns from earlier are still there, but I am happy about all of this, too, and I don’t want you to doubt that for a second, okay?”

“I know,” Kon nodded his head, ducking down to press a kiss to the skin on the underneath side of Tim’s wrist. “If I had any idea that you were in trouble…that it wasn’t just me being obnoxious…I would have said something right away. I thought—I thought—“

“I know,” Tim leaned forward to brush his lips against Kon’s closed eyes, and Kon held him that much tighter for his effort. “And we’re going to sit down and talk about all of that kind of stuff one day, and hash it all out, but I’ve got some other stuff I need to think about right now—stuff that’s got me really worried—and I need to know that you’re going to be okay.”

“What—me?” Kon’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion, as he pulled back and looked up at Tim in surprise. “I’ll be—I’m _fine_. I mean I’m sorry for not telling you and I’m sorry I kind of accidentally got you pregnant, but I did what I thought was best at the time, and I stand by that. That doesn’t matter, though—what are you talking about? What’s wrong?”

“I—I’m not sure,” Tim looked back down away from Kon to the “empty” ultrasound screen, and Kon kissed him again—quickly, gently, in a motion that seemed to pleasantly surprise Tim—before he loosened his grip on Tim’s waist and thighs and let the omega fall back down to the ground. As soon as Tim’s feet were back on the ground, he was crossing the step or two back over to the ultrasound machine, “The fluid in my gestational sac had little white specs of _something_ in it, and I don’t know what they are, and I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”

“Could it be from where the baby is part Kryptonian?” Kon questioned as he stepped back up beside Tim and rested a hand on Tim’s hip as Tim pulled the wand up from the around their ankles by its cord and pressed it back to his pelvis.

“I don’t know,” Tim shook his head, glaring at the computer screen as if he was trying to intimidate the answers out of it. “…Alfred?”

“I have never heard of such a thing before, Master Timothy,” Alfred emerged from the group behind them obediently. “At least—not this early in a pregnancy, that is.”

Instead of pacifying Tim, Alfred’s answer only seemed to concern him more, if the deeper set of his frown was anything to go by, but Kon appreciated Alfred’s honesty.

“If you would be interested, I could preform a trans-pelvic exam looking for deformities that you are untrained to detect,” Alfred went on, taking another step closer. “I’m afraid it has been awhile since I have preformed this particular ultrasound in regards to a potential fetus, but I do believe that I know my way around well enough to get you started.”

“I would appreciate that, Alfred,” Tim gave a small exhale of relief as he looked back over his shoulder at Alfred, and a second later he was handing over the wand for a third time. Kon took a step back in tandem with his omega, and Alfred stepped up in front of the machine, clearing out the changes to the settings that Tim had made as he slipped the wand back into its holder.

“Damian, if you would?” Alfred looked beyond Kon’s shoulder, and Kon was only marginally surprised to realize that Damian had moved with Alfred and was adding another sheet and a pillow to the previously ignored bed behind them for Tim’s comfort.

“Of course,” Damian acknowledged the butler’s request with a sharp nod of his head, but Kon’s attention was quickly pulled back to Tim as Alfred re-righted the chair that Tim had knocked out of his way in his haste to get to the ultrasound machine.

“Kon, do you know where Clark is today?”

“No,” he shook his head, reaching up with his free hand to brush Tim’s bangs back out of his face. “I don’t. I haven’t talked to him since we got back from being off world last week—“

“I can figure it out for you,” Bruce offered from where he was still standing back a bit with Dick and Jason—pulling a tablet out of who-even-knew-where Bruce kept those things (probably in some kind of a case strapped to a harness underneath of his shirt so he never had to be without one) as he did so, and Kon didn’t think he’d ever been more thankful for Bruce’s willingness to jump into action and take charge. “Just give me a minute.”

“Alright,” Tim nodded his head before he turned his attention to his elder brothers, and Kon stepped back out of the way as Damian shooed him away from Tim so that Damian could guide Tim towards the bed. “Jason—can you do me favor and go give Dr. Thompkins a call?”

Damian proceeded to roll his eyes as Tim’s free hand reached out to snag Kon’s, but Kon just sent him a downright dazzling smile and succumbed to the tug of Tim’s fingers towards the bed as Tim climbed up onto the sheets.

“I don’t have an OB/GYN I trust, but I think her expertise and opinions would be good to have, too,” Tim went on as if nothing had happened, and he was so used to the once rivals-turned-brothers annoying one another, that Kon doubted he even noticed it anymore. “At least until we can vet an OB/GYN with more expertise.”

“I’ll do you one better than calling her,” Jason promised as he weaved his way around both Damian and Kon to get to Tim to kiss his forehead. “I’ll go wait outside her office door until she’s done for the day, and bring her back here.”

“That works, too,” Tim’s eyes closed as he leaned up into the kiss, allowing himself the small comfort until—

“Clark’s still in Metropolis,” Bruce spoke up from where he’d wandered in the Cave as he continued to scroll through something or other on his tablet, and Kon frowned as he watched Bruce’s scowl set farther and farther onto his face as he read more of the information that he was reviewing. “It looks like he’s taken a couple of days off to spend some time with some of his… _friends_. I can probably get him to answer his phone if I call him enough, but I doubt I’ll be able to get him to talk to me long enough that I can get him to come—“

“I don’t care what you have to tell him,” Tim cut Bruce off firmly, and Kon would by lying if he said that certain parts of himself didn’t stir just a little bit at the authority in Tim’s tone. “I want him here— _now._ He’s the best source of information we have.”

“Are you sure?” Bruce raised his eyebrows down at Tim, but Kon knew it wasn’t because Bruce doubted Tim’s judgment.

Bruce was just going to do something that he knew the rest of the pack probably wouldn’t approve of and wanted to make sure that he asked twice so nobody would give him any kind of grief about it once it had been done.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Tim answered him, but Kon was temporarily distracted by Alfred reaching over to tuck a towel into the waste band of Tim’s pants.

“Sorry, Alf—“

“That’s quite alright, Master Conner,” Alfred gave him a small smile as Kon looked around for another place to stand before he eventually just hefted himself up into the air.

“Dick—” Tim was looking to his eldest brother as Kon turned his attention back to him.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m on it,” Dick waved Tim’s order off, pausing a second to lean up and press his lips to Jason’s, before Jason headed off towards the stairs and Dick took off towards the Computer as Alfred drug his chair and the large machine a step or two closer to the bed and then made himself comfortable at Tim’s side. “Take the blood samples Dami’s going to give me and run comprehensive studies on your hormone levels and lymphatic system, while starting a running record of everything that is said and done from here on out. This isn’t my first rodeo.”

As if on cue, Kon looked around to see Damian dumping a handful of IV kits and blood collection tubes by Tim’s left elbow on the free side of the bed, just as Alfred poured some more gel onto the ultrasound’s probe.

“I’m afraid this is going to be rather cold, Master Timothy,” Alfred cut off whatever Tim’s caustic response to Dick was going to be, and Tim’s entire demeanor changed underneath of the beta’s gaze.

“That’s okay,” he reassured Alfred quietly, and Kon immediately bent down to press a kiss to Tim’s forehead. How he’d managed to get himself wedged in between the examination bed and the wall behind it was completely beyond Kon, but in between the examination bed and the wall was where he was, and Tim nuzzled up into his touch as Kon maneuvered Tim’s right hand back down to Tim’s side in favor of using both of his hands to caress the sides of Tim’s face.

“Father,” Kon vaguely noted Damian speaking up in what Kon could only describe as a clinical tone as he ripped open packages and hooked a surgical mask up over his mouth and nose. “How many vials?”

“…Eight,” Bruce answered him after a moment of hesitation, and Kon finally forced himself to look up and paid attention to the conversation as Tim’s eyebrows furrowed underneath of him.

“Just eight?” he asked, craning his head up again so that he could see Bruce over his own feet.

“Yes?” Bruce answered uncertainly, before he seemed to find his resolve and nodded his head firmly. “Yes. There is a myriad of tests that I want to run, but we don’t know how sensitive you body is going to be the loss of the blood, and we don’t know if the fetus will tolerate you receiving a transfusion if we take too much. We’ll start with eight vials—that should cover the most immediate concerns—and the rest we can take later, after we know a little bit more about the fetus and what it’s going to do to your body.”

“Okay,” Tim yielded to Bruce’s judgment, flinching the tiniest bit as Damian started feeling around for veins in the bend of his elbow.

“Sorry,” Damian murmured, gently repositioning Tim’s forearm with his left hand as he worked with his right, and Tim turned to look at him.

“It’s okay,” he soothed, brushing his knuckles up along Damian’s left forearm as the boy reached for an already opened IV kit and needle with his right hand. “You’re not doing it on purpose.”

“Still,” Damian shifted in his chair after he’d successfully accessed one of Tim’s veins on his first try.

“Master Timothy,” Alfred cut in quietly, and Tim and Kon turned to look at him in tandem as Damian pulled back the needle and set about attaching the proper tubing to the remaining cannula. “I hate to be a bother, but could you possibly roll your hips under?”

“Of course,” Tim answered him, moving to do as he was told while being as careful as he could about not interrupting Damian’s work. “Like this?”

“Yes,” Alfred answered him with a small smile as Damian flushed the IV with saline and adjusted the cannula ever so slightly for a better flow. “Just like that.”

“Have you found anything, yet?” Tim asked somewhere between hopeful and concerned, and Kon found his thumb soothing down over Tim’s temple as Damian started syphoning off blood from Tim’s peripheral for the tests that Bruce wanted to run and released the tourniquet around Tim’s bicep.

“Why—yes, Master Timothy!” Alfred answered, his eyes sparkling as he smiled down at Tim. “I can confirm that you still have a bladder, and that you are—in fact—an omega.”

“Alfred,” Tim huffed as he rolled his eyes in exasperation, and Kon chuckled again as he continued his ministrations over Tim’s temples and cheeks—just because he could—and Tim relaxed some underneath of his fingers.

“I have yet to find anything that is too awfully concerning, Master Timothy,” Alfred softened, as he pulled back to squeeze more gel onto the ultrasound wand. “And I agree with your earlier assertion that you are pregnant, but I’m afraid I can’t give you anymore of an answer than that until after I’m done. Ultrasounds, as you know, are all-inclusive tests, and I’m not even a quarter of a way through all of things that I want to look at, given the circumstances.”

Tim continued to half-glare at Alfred for a moment, before he grumbled an, “alright”, and turned his attention back to Kon for a lack of having anything else to do, “Are you doing okay up there?”

“Yes, love,” Kon nodded his head, pushing forward so he could press a soft upside-down kiss to Tim’s lips. “I am wonderful. Is there anything I can get you to make you more comfortable?”

“No, I’m good,” Tim shook his head, before he turned his face into Kon’s hand and Kon took the opportunity to pillow his own head down onto the bed above Tim’s left shoulder. “Has your TTK come back, yet?”

“No,” Kon answered honestly. “But I don’t think it’ll be long now—my ribs are almost done healing themselves, so probably only another fifteen or twenty minutes.”

“Well, it’s good that you think it won’t take that much longer,” Tim sighed and let his eyes fall closed as his heart rate stuttered and jerked every forty-five seconds or so with his suppressed worry. “I’m sorry I pulled Kryptonite on you earlier.”

“Don’t be,” Kon soothed—both figuratively and literally as his fingers continued to caress Tim’s skin gently and he turned his head so that he could have a better view of the side of Tim’s head and his face. “If it hadn’t been you, it would have been one of your brothers eventually, and I’d much rather have you punch me in the face than one of them.”

“That is very true,” Tim let out a little giggle, his eyes opening back up as he turned to look at Kon, and Kon couldn’t help it. His fingers threaded up into Tim’s hair as Tim gave a sad smile. “But still. You treat me amazingly, Kon, in every aspect of our lives, and I shouldn’t have thought the worst of you so easily. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Kon leaned forward to press his lips to Tim’s, and they both pushed the slightest bit closer to the each other as Damian and Alfred continued to work on either side of them, because all they could do was wait and see what happened, and Kon didn’t like the thought of that any more than Tim did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Standard ultrasound machines do NOT show blood flow (the flashes of color Kon references). Technically, part of the procedure that Tim performs here is a Doppler Echocardiograph, which uses ultrasound technology to evaluate information about the cardiovascular system via the Doppler Effect, but from a procedural aspect the two tests are almost exactly the same (at least as Tim uses them here). Doppler Echocardiography is an incredibly interesting field of study and I could go on about various ultrasounds and Dopplers for hours (I’ve literally had hundreds of them done over the last five years or so). Aside from the blood thing, all of the things that Tim explains are true “ultrasound” things, and the descriptions he gives are accurate—which is why I chose to use the term ultrasound instead of spelling out Doppler Echocardiograph every single time it’s mentioned.  
> Ra’s sword didn’t quite knick Tim’s spleen like it did in the comics, but that’s (hopefully) a story for another day! Similarly, I’ve changed the back-story with Prime a tiny bit, but aside from Tim’s comment here to Kon, it really doesn’t affect the story all that much.  
> The angst is over for now! There is more to come, but it’s a little bit better spaced out, and the next part largely focuses on family dynamics and contains a lot of fluff. It is also Jaydick centric (though, TimKon has their appearances, too!), just as I promised! I’m not sure how long it’s going to take me to edit, but my goal is to have posted again by next weekend (January 14-15).  
> As always, thank you for taking the time to read, and feel free to let me know what you think!


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